GUIs are great—we wouldn’t want to live without them. But if you’re a Mac or Linux user and you want to get the most out of your operating system (and your keystrokes), you owe it to yourself to get ...

When Apple announced the release of Mac OS X, many Mac users were stunned: here was a new operating system based on the venerable Unix, which, they feared, would call into question the Mac’s legendary ...

Most every Unix sysadmin has run smack into line ending incompatibilities from time to time. The most common problem is the appearance of ^M characters at the ends of lines in text files that were ...

If you regularly use networks that change your OS X, Linux, or Unix system's host name, you may notice the Terminal command prompt reflect this. Here is how to prevent this from happening. Topher ...

Lifehacker reader Michael writes in with a nifty tip that was lurking in our comments all along, but deserves to see the bright light of posting. If you're already using the Unix-like Cygwin, it's an ...

A firmware password secures a system against unauthorized changes at the ok prompt. If you don’t have a firmware password set, anyone with access to your system’s console can modify your OpenBoot ...

In the first line, I moved up from /Users to /; in the second line, I moved back to the previous working directory, /Users. Opening a Directory in the Finder — Sure, the Terminal lets you move around ...